Beliefs and Happiness can be Mutually Exclusive
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: And when you're in Azkaban, that's a bit of a plus… [Carlotta Pinkstone]


**A/N:** Written for History of Magic, Assignment 3 for Term 3 of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Task this time was to write about a character and their time in Azkaban. Extra points for a lesser known one so I went for **Carlotta Pinkstone because she's got a fascinating story, kind of like Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma and a bunch of other political activists (she's the one I studied back in high school so the easiest to remember). Enjoy!**

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 **Beliefs and Happiness can be Mutually Exclusive**  
 _and when you're in Azkaban, that's a bit of a plus…_

It was ironic, or perhaps simply the backwards nature their world sometimes showed, but Azkaban would not teach her she was wrong. There was a very firm line between belief and happiness after all – and she suspected it was the same for many people. Many guilty of the crimes that sentenced them, anyhow. The innocent ones – well, that was a cruelty beyond compare. The innocent ones were the happy ones, the ones that had the most to lose to the dementors. Some of the guilty ones lost too, but people like her? In Azkaban because of a belief? Dementors wouldn't strip that away. Not at all.

They took other things. They left her wishing for her wand on more than one occasion; a wandless lumos did nothing in that cell. Or even a lightbulb that the dementors and the magic dampening wards around them would be able to do nothing about. That wasn't magic after all. Not at all. That was muggle brilliance. She would ask someone to smuggle one in when they came – but no-one did come. Belief was good enough for them outside the cell, but inside she was alone with it. She didn't know if her supporters continued the cause. If they'd appear in the empty cell across from her. Or if they'd given her up for a lost cause and went on with their lives, behind the statute of secrecy. Or if they simply planned to wait out her sentence, until she was released.

Because she would certainly be released. She remembered the conviction well. Unfortunately, that counted as a happy thought so it slipped away from her as frequently, so she avoided thinking about it. And about lightbulbs. And about all the other things muggles could bring to the wizarding world – all the developments they could gain, all the conveniences. All the things they missed out from simply because their leaders were a bunch of traditionalist cowards. That was frustration. That was annoyance, and anger, and a fire that couldn't warm her fingers because the dementors were about, spreading frost and stealing happiness as their pay. But the dementors could also not snatch that away and it was enough to stop her freezing over, stop her skin from shrinking and splitting apart, letting out the blood.

And they couldn't take away the fact that she believed in the course that had put her in Azkaban – and that she couldn't exactly be happy surrounded by those soulless creatures. Their own weakness, when she didn't have a wand to do a Patronus with.

She tried not to think about muggles in Azkaban. Or muggles with dementors. Same thing, really. Not that it was a cheery thought. It really wasn't. But that got her thinking about how muggles might use their technology to aid them – they had one better than magical photographs already but they kind of lacked with the portraits – because that got her thinking of how much better the two worlds would be if they just merged their resources and the silly statute of secrecy wasn't around…and then the dementors swooped in and sucked that giddy feeling out of her.

It wasn't quite the same as ranting to herself about the statute of secrecy. That was passion and hate. The endless possibilities that arrogance and stupidity left untapped was passion and love – and the dementors fed on that. Those were thoughts she had to hold. And it was easier, once the bright memories greyed and there wasn't much to bring them back to life again. It was easier when her mind didn't race a mile a minute anymore, when the dementors went off searching for fresh blood, fresh happiness.

A few months in Azkaban were a lot longer than they seemed, but she had a fire that surpassed that length. She got out. She spent a few months recovering, thinking, training herself to think again – and then it was back to her day job, campaigning with wizards, slipping magic to muggles in ways that surprised and amazed and didn't frighten –

And she was back in Azkaban again, then out, then in, and each stay lasted a little longer and she felt a little greyer coming out, felt her ideas of combining the two worlds a little more shallow – but her belief was still there. It was the benefits she saw in the future of it, and the ways to make it happen, that dwindled, that the dementors stole away from her. Her happiness in her work began to permanently fade. It was a rebellion – it always was a rebellion, but now it was the sort where one lost sight of the end in all the red. Or grey, in her case.

Luckily, there were other supporters. Low key, but willing to offer ideas when she was out of them. It wasn't quite the same but by then she was in too deep. She'd swum with the dementors more than once and she couldn't toss it all away in the times she was out of it.

Back in. Back out. The Ministry seemed eager to give her a life sentence but she hadn't done a crime to warrant it so in and out it was. They were different cells but they were each as brain numbing at each other, each as quenching – and the dementors never did change. They just came by less and less: she had less to surrender each time. Her fire was still there: her stubborn flame. Repeating like a mantra through her thoughts because, by the end, she'd lost the capacity for anything else in that place.

She could honestly say she'd get that statute changed or die trying because there wasn't much else left by that point.


End file.
